Parramatta GirlsHighly Commended, APDG Award for Emerging Live Performance Design, 2014
Award-winning Playwright Alana Valentine has woven together the true stories of women who were once Parramatta Girls into a masterful tribute to their courage, humour, strength and optimism. Under the direction of Tanya Goldberg, eight extraordinary actresses brought this powerful work to audiences in Parramatta as part of the anniversary that marked 40 years since the closure of the institution.
“Tobhiyah Stone Feller has designed a set that takes us straight to the bleak history of Parramatta Girls Detention Centre: it’s rough surfaces, shadows and spectres made palpable by way of Verity Hampson’s lighting.”
Lloyd Bradford Syke
Daily Review, Crikey
“Tobhiyah Stone Feller‘s set is extremely effective, minimalist ‘Institution’- grey concrete rubble with smashed windows, heavy doors with rusty locks, cold, dangerous wire and the atmosphere of Jane Eyre’s Lowood. The staging is also rather minimalistic, with a few tables/chairs/buckets as required which allows for the fluid ,cinematic scene and time shifts.”
Lynne Lancaster, Sydney Arts Guide
“The Parramatta Girls Home is a 10-minute walk from this theatre. It is too far away to cast a literal shadow, but thanks to a set design that echoes some of the now-derelict building’s features, it feels very close indeed.”
Jason Blake, SMH
“Production designer, Tobhiyah Stone Feller, has created an environment of half-torn
buildings, like a bomb site, full of shadows, ghosts and debris, much like the
women who have returned to the site of their childhood torment.”
SOYP
“There is a strong evocation of place in this play brought out by director Tanya Goldberg and production designer Tobhiyah Feller’s wonderful set. This is an important element as these memories would be inextricably linked and triggered by the location in which they occurred – in cells or dungeons, as they might rightfully be called. In this way, we see a type of Proustian involuntary memory creep out of the women. As they explore the places where they once lived they can’t help but re-experience their past.”
Dinner and A Show, by theatrebloggers